The White Raven

by Robert Low

  There was a moody silence and then Dobrynya cleared his throat. 'So, we cannot go over the walls. Nor can we go through the gate, which will take a ram we do not have and cannot get.'

  If it was not for Cod-Biter we could go away, I was thinking, while the silent little Olaf, Vladimir's constant shadow, poked the fire with a stick and sent sparks whirling up. From the walls, as if to mock us, we heard someone stamping to keep out the cold.

  'We will burn it,' declared Vladimir. 'The gate. We will set it on fire.'

  'With what?' I countered. 'Those timbers are iced solid. They will not burn without oil. Do we have oil?'

  'Then you work out a way,' Vladimir shrilled angrily. 'You won't, though, for you don't want to, since as soon as you do . . .'

  He clipped the rest off, realizing what he was about to say and buried his face right into the furs to hide his shame.

  As soon as we attacked, Cod-Biter would die. It was possible, if Farolf saw all was up for him. If we were quick, all the same . . .

  I got up, stiff with cold, and dragged the ice burrs off my beard, then walked away, conscious of their eyes on me. The darkness beyond the fire took me in even colder arms and hurried me towards the one the Oathsworn had lit, in the lee of a wagon and under a wadmal canopy. Behind, I heard the level rumble of Dobrynya, no doubt gently chiding his prince and telling him how much he needed Orm and the Oathsworn

  Fuck them, I thought, sullen as a storm sky, for I could see no way out of this mess and wondered — not for the first time — what game Odin played now.

  'So?' challenged Finn. 'What does the princeling want us to do?'

  I told them and Kvasir grunted. Thorgunna said what I had been thinking, that we should just go away and I expected a sharp growl from Finn, was surprised when he stared into the flames and said nothing.

  'Can we do that?' demanded Ospak. 'Surely we would be ridden down by those big Slav turds of the druzhina if we just took off?'

  'A good long-handled axe will see that lot off,' muttered Gyrth, who had just such a weapon.

  'A sword drenched in blood easily finds its mark,' agreed Red Njal, 'as my granny used to say.'

  'The hacked-off foot cannot scurry fat;' Hlenni Brimill countered, grinning and. Red Njal frowned, considering the matter.

  'The lame man runs when he has to,' he said eventually. Men groaned, but Tjorvir spat in the fire and scowled at them both.

  'I came for silver. Bad enough we have to split it so many ways without running away empty-handed after all we have been through. As my own granny would say if she was here.'

  Voices grunted assent, unseen in the dark.

  'Are we so to split this great treasure?' Thorgunna's voice was light enough as she stepped into the firelight, but the eyes she laid on me were firm and black.

  'Why else are we here, then?' demanded Ospak.

  'To keep the stake from certain people's. arses,' Hauk Fast-Sailor grunted. 'Namely our own.'

  'Aye, but,' Ospak began and Gizur cut him off.

  'But no buts,' he said. 'It is Vladimir's treasure now, sold to save us from what that little axe murderer Olaf Crowbone got us into, make no mistake on it.'

  'Odin's arse it is,' spat Gyrth. 'It is our treasure.'

  'Our treasure,' mimicked Finn suddenly. 'Our treasure? You are come late to that feast, Steinbrodir.'

  'Aye, well,' Gyrth said uneasily. Then, more indignantly, he added: 'I am Oathsworn now, just as you. My arse is freezing here, just as yours is.'

  'Did it burn in Serkland?' grunted Hauk Fast-Sailor. 'Did you fight under the walls of Sarkel the first time we came here in search of this hoard?'

  'I am here now,' returned Gyrth steadily. 'And others like me. Without us, you would still be clucking at hens in Oestergotland, Hauk Fast-Sailor.'

  'We should not quarrel over this,' Red Njal said and Hauk rounded on him.

  'What? No granny-wisdom about arguing over all the riches of the world, Njal?'

  Red Njal shrugged and favoured Hauk with a face as dour as a gathering storm. 'Brawl with a pig and you come away with its stink,' he said.

  There were some chuckles and grunts of agreement at this, while others started in to arguing one way or the other and Hauk, blinking furiously at Red Njal, was clearly working up to serious anger. I silenced them all, surprised that I was the only one, it seemed, who could see the truth of it.

  'It is not our treasure. Or Vladimir's. Or even Atil's. It is Odin's — and he gifts it to those he thinks most fitting.'

  I stared at them all, one by one while their eyes slithered icily away.

  'Bone, blood and steel,' I added pointedly. 'Cod-Biter is in there. We will not run off and leave our own to die.'

  There was silence at that, sullen and dark, for the truth of it bit as deep as the cold. Eventually, Finn stirred, blinked and poked sluggish embers out of the fire.

  'Aye, well, first we have to get to over those walls. One step, then the other, as my old granny used to say.'

  'You never had an old granny,' accused Red Njal.

  'I did,' answered Finn. 'And a cunning woman she was. Knew about when folk would die by watching birds and that if you dreamed a dream three times in a row it would come true.'

  'Sounds like Olaf Crowbone,' muttered Kvasir. 'Perhaps you are also his uncle. If you are, you have my sympathies.'

  'Did this full-cunning mother's mother of yours have a way of leaping walls or walking through doors?' I demanded, which clamped their jaws shut as if they had been stitched.

  'Well?' I demanded, feeling the eyes resting on me, dragging the weight of the jarl tort until I swore it dug into the flesh of my neck. 'We need to get over those walls or through the gate, so if anyone has some clever in him, now is the time to hoik it out for us all to share.'

  They ran through the ram and ladders and I explained why that would not do. Jon Asanes came up with the idea of an upturned cart with men under it, running at the gate as a ram, which was not bad at all. We gave that one up because we could not be sure the cart would be strong enough, or the men to carry it, for that matter.

  Eventually, Kvasir stretched and yawned. 'If we cannot go over the walls and through the gate, then we will have to go over the gate.'

  There was a pause; those who had not heard it properly asked their neighbours what Kvasir had said. When they were told, they were no wiser than any the rest of us, so he laid it out and it became clear that, while we had been talking, he had been thinking.

  When he was finished, we all chewed on it, looking for flaws in it until we realized that Kvasir had seen more with his one eye than all of us with our two.

  'Can you do that?' Dobrynya asked, when I walked back to his fire to tell him what the Oathsworn would do when morning came.

  'We will do it,' I answered, 'for we are the Oathsworn.'

  I was glad they could not see my clenched belly and curled-up balls and discover how firmly I believed this.

  Dobrynya glanced at Sigurd, then over at the sleeping Vladimir, little Olaf huddled beside him, and nodded wearily. I hunkered down beside him and we stared at the fire for a while, while the pair of them raked around for the delicate words to find out what the prince's pillars needed to know —if I had been so offended by this boy prince that I would leave or, worse, seek revenge.

  I had no reason to do it, but saved them the trouble of speaking.

  'In return for the lives he held in his hand,' I said to the fire, 'I agreed to hold up the prince's breaking sky. True, no oath was spoken on it — as you know, we oath only to each other, in the eye of Odin — but I am still shouldering the burden.'

  There was silence while the fire found ice in its food and spat irritably. Then Dobrynya cleared his throat.

  'He is young, but growing well,' he said. 'There will come a time when you will welcome the friendship of such a prince. The death of his father has flung him into this too early and unprepared.'

  I nodded. The friendship of a prince would be welcome if I survived the
winter — or if he did. I said as much and Sigurd grinned, which pinched the flesh white around his silver nose.

  'The one thing I have learned,' he growled, 'is that some are born to greatness. He is one. Little Olaf there is another. They will survive.'

  Even if everyone else has to die, I was thinking, while his little Olaf smiled and showed teeth bloody with firelight, as though he had just lifted his head from a fresh kill. Yet, for all his cub fierceness and his strange seidr magic, he was afraid most of the time. Afraid and alone, for all his Uncle Sigurd and his distant, unknown relatives, for Crowbone would always be fastened to Klerkon's privy, waiting in vain for them to rescue him.

  Near him, Vladimir stirred and moaned, now only a boy in his sleep and one who could not ever have his father say all the things a father should, nor say all the things a son should.

  I knew how they both felt, which was why I held up their sky.

  That night, I dreamed of Hild, the woman who had led us originally to Atil's howe and had gone mad there — or been possessed by the fetch of Atil's dead bride who had, legend said, killed him and been fastened alive to his throne in that tomb.

  I saw Hild as I had last seen her, hair flying like black snakes, the sabre she had, twin of my own, whirling like a skein of light as she slid away, back into that dark place, screaming curses at me while the flood-water rose round her.

  I did not care what Finn believed. I knew Hild, or something like the fetch of her, was out on the steppe, leading Atil's own oathsworn against us.

  In the dim light of morning most of us were too numbed to wake, sliding instead into a bleary-eyed awareness of a tiny, white, dreich world, unable to work out whether a night, a morning or a whole day had just gone by.

  The strongest kicked the rest of us awake. That was Thorgunna, walking as if her legs had turned to timbers, but still capable of forcing me up, to make me do the jarl-task of forcing everyone else to their feet.

  Cracking the skin of rime that had formed on me, clothes and beards and hair, I stumbled around looking for whitened mounds that had been men the night before, thumping them, growling — ranting, even, until the ice and snow cracked and heaved apart.

  Slowly, the Oathsworn grunted themselves into the day; the whole camp did, sluggish and reluctant as a thawing river. Two were dead — none of mine, thank the gods — and those were stacked like driftwood, for there was no way even to uncurl them from their last frozen huddle let alone strip them of valuables, armour and weapons.

  Ref Steinsson, rummaging in his sea-chest for anything that would give him warmth, showed us what had happened to the bits of poor tin he kept to make repairs on pots — we stared dully at how the cold had crumbled the slivers to a grey powder.

  Fires were lit. I choked down some oats soaked in warmed meltwater — the horses had the same — and we armed for the day. By the time the sun was a red half-orb on the lip of the world, we were ready, a band of pinch-faced, sunken-eyed thrall-born, beards dripping with melting ice, faces beaded with melt-water from hair crammed under helmets and heating up, only to refreeze on our faces. We did not look capable of walking to the gate never mind storming it.

  Worse than them were the Chosen, of whom I was one. We had taken off byrnies and layers of clothing, down to almost no more than a tunic, a helmet, breeks and boots. The cold no longer seeped, it chewed on us as we stamped and shivered — if it had not been for the battle-fire burning in us, we would already be blue and dying.

  Dobrynya rode forward with little Vladimir, now in his silvered mail and plumed helmet, every inch a half-sized warrior. Sigurd led sixty horsemen — the last war horses still capable of being ridden by armoured men — in a long sweep to the far gate, a move designed to drag defenders away from this one. Olaf was with him and gave a cheerful wave.

  The rest of the druzhina, on foot and with bows uncased, were lined up and waiting behind the Oathsworn, beyond bowshot range of the defenders. From behind the gate came the sound of hammering; the defenders at work. I worried, then, that they were nailing the bar to the gate, which would make things hard for us.

  'A good morning to die,' declared Vladimir sternly, which was something his father had no doubt been fond of saying. I said nothing, for such a statement was far short of a battle speech designed to get our ice-limbed men moving. Beside, unclenching my jaw only made my teeth chatter.

  'Time to begin,' declared Dobrynya.

  'Just so,' said Vladimir and hefted his little spear. Then the two of them set their shields, kicked their horses and ran straight at the gate.

  Say what you like about Vladimir — and many did as he grew into his power — but he had courage. The idea was Dobrynya's, to test how many archers the defenders had and, I learned later, he had wanted to do it alone. A swift gallop, the throw of a spear into the gate — the traditional way to announce the start of a siege with no quarter — then another swift gallop back to safety.

  Vladimir added himself to the plan and showed his deep-thinking even then, for the men were as impressed by this display as they had been depressed by his loss of face in front of Farolf the day before.

  He thundered his way up to the walls, hurled his little spear over and then yelled, his voice cracked with youth and excitement: 'Idu na vy!'

  The druzhina bawled out their approval. Idu na vy — I am coming against you, his father's war-cry to his enemies. Vladimir's followers were so roaring with what had been done that it leaped to the Oathsworn and the blood surged up in them, too, so that they beat on their shields and howled like wolves. Steam rose.

  Only a few desultory arrows flew at the pair of riders as they galloped back and slithered to a stop, the horses panting already, unfit and malnourished.

  'Well,' said Dobrynya, his eyes glittering with excitement. and amusement. 'We have done our part, Jarl Orm.'

  I turned, the belly-clenching fear of what had to come next filling me. The Oathsworn were ready and I fought for something clever to say — then Odin, as ever, stepped in and made the dog bark inside the village.

  All our heads turned. A dog, alive and uneaten. That meant they had food to spare and,. even if it was stinking fare, that dog was good eating and belonged to us. I said so and it was enough. Heads went back and howls went up, so that the hackles on everyone else's neck went stiff — the Oathsworn had scented blood.

  We trotted forward, shields up. The druzhina bowmen moved forward and fired in staggered volleys; shafts whirred, thunked into timbers. I looked to my left, to where Finn snarled, then to my right, where Ospak loped. Six men raced ahead, three of them with shields.

  The gate was a double-door affair set in a frame of timber ramparts. There was no earthwork here, obviously, so two timber squares had been erected on the earthwork on either side of the gate — but the actual palisade was made from the same length of timbers as all the rest. Which meant it was feet shorter with no earthwork to stand on and there was no rampart above the gate, only a solid balk of timber; a man on horseback would have to duck to get through the opened doors.

  Six men crashed into the timbers of the gate. The tower defenders bobbed up to shoot them and ducked hastily back down as arrows drummed into the wood near their heads. The three pairs unshipped a shield, grasped it between them and looked back at us.

  'Bone, blood and steel,' Finn growled, grinning and savage as a mad dog and Ospak howled up at the sky, his neck cording. Our axes clashed, three as one, our breath smoked together and I found I was sweating-warm, though I could not feel my feet. Then we sprinted, a bearded axe in either hand, running, it seemed to me, on the stumps of our ankles.

  We were the lightest — well, save for Finn and I wanted at least one mad fighting man for what we did. Ospak was small and I was no beefy oarsman, so we leaped on the shields and were hurled upwards with ease by those picked for the ox-hump rowing muscle across their shoulders.

  I flopped over the top of the palisade, scrabbling on the age-smoothed points of the timbers, then swung my legs and drop
ped. Ospak, even lighter than me, practically vaulted over; Finn hooked one bearded axe in the top timbers and hauled himself up and over. Already, three more steam-smoked Chosen were hurling themselves at the shieldmen.

  I landed with a crash and on my bad ankle. Ospak sprawled beside me and was up in a moment, snarling and roaring. He hurled one axe up and to his right, felling an archer. Then he waited for the rush of armed men.

  Finn landed like a cat and did not wait for anything. Roaring, he hurled himself at the nearest men, both axes already blurring in his big fists.

  'Get the gate, Orm!'

  I got up, half-turned — a body hurled down, fell over cursing and rolled upright. Tjorvir. A second landed nearby, was getting up and an arrow took him in the foot. Howling, pinned to the frozen ground by it, Snorri Littli had to reach down and try to tug it free. Tjorvir cursed his way to the right-hand tower ladder, hurling one axe upwards and snarling at the men above as he forged up to them.

  I turned all the way to the gate — and stopped. The bar was there, right enough but there was a man on it. His right hand was nailed to the bar and his left was nailed to the gate on the other side. Thorstein Cod-Biter hung between the double doors, dripping blood and looking at me from the bruised ruin of his face. Farolfs last vicious joke and the hammering I had heard earlier.

  'Get the gate!' screamed Finn as Runolf Harelip, crashing over the palisade, scrambled to his side to fight off the knots of defenders, armed with spears and shields and axes. Someone else cursed and slavered on top of the gate timbers and did not jump but I was only vaguely aware of him.

  Cod-Biter's eyes met mine, blue and glittering as a summer sea. He grinned from a bloody mouth and I thought he winked, but one eye was already lost in blood and bruises, so I might have been mistaken.

  All of that seemed to last a week but, looking back on it now, was no longer than the time it took me to draw breath, hold it and swing one axe at his right hand. It severed it at the wrist, slantwise and too high, so that half the forearm went with it, for I was a bad axeman and it was my left hand, with only a three-fingered grip.